shopping village

The winds have been extremely strong. This means that we’ve had some days that the waves were raging so fiercely that we could not go to sea. It also has meant that the shipment of food and drinking water has not been able to come to our station for over a week. Luckily Yellu is nearby, a relatively large village with a large green mosque and an equally impressive telephone mast. The village predominantly houses workers from the nearby pearl farm. The income of most people in this area appears to be from the pearl farms that stretch over kms. of sea. Yellu is where all the passing ships and boats stop to get supplies – and it’s amazing what you can get here in this middle of nowhere place. We would often stop by on our way back home mostly to pick up some water, some Oreos and mobile phone credit. SO everything is available, except fruit and vegetables and nothing is in definite supply. One day we went by to find that all stores were out of water, not a bottle to be found – a couple of big boats had just come by an hour before and cleaned them out….

When the boat from Sorong finally did come containing our order of freshness, we were thrilled with happiness. After ten days of Indo-Mie, rice and salty dried fish for every meal, vegetables and fruit never tasted so good!